Amelia Johnson: Food and Lifestyle Photographer

Living with Intention in 2014

Hello 2014! And welcome. 2014, you are so very welcome.

It’s January 6th 2014, and there is a whole year ahead of us. I mentioned before that I’d been doing Stratejoy’s Holiday Council at the end of the year. What a wonderful way to finish one year and enter the next. Through international calls, recorded interviews, work sheets, visualisations, asking and answering questions we each decided what we wanted to leave in 2013 and what we wanted to take into 2014. Then we made plans for 2014. Set priorities, intentions and thought about how we’d like to feel at the end of 2014. I am already a goal-setting, self-help loving, manifesting chick, but this made me consider how I wanted to feel, more than what I wanted to achieve, and then, how I could achieve those feelings. I’ve kept my usual type of goals, continuing to work with and working with new fabulous clients, financial goals, continuing to spend a good amount of time with family and my oldest friends. I will always strive to improve my photography, the quality of work on here, and to quench my thirst for ambition and adventure. But the time I spent on this allowed me to think beyond those gals.

Molly from Stratejoy suggests making a theme for the year. Something that summarises your vision for the year. This is probably the part of the workshop that resonated most with me. We brainstormed around all areas of our lives. We wrote about abundence and cavities, looked at the ‘why’ and then reviewed which words kept reappearing. If you’re interested in creating your own theme for the year, Molly has a free recording on how to do that here: http://www.stratejoy.com/2011/01/how-to-create-your-personal-theme/

When I’m receiving and making 50 phone calls a day, am being bombarded by email, as well as whats’app and sms, I sometimes feel like I’m going a bit mad. My brain feels SO busy all the time. I am half way through replying to a message, only to get a phone call and forget about the message. At the end of the day I fall asleep with my head buzzing with tasks for tomorrow and next week, things I should have done today, people to contact tomorrow, wondering how I’ll fit in some exercise, and visualising the perfect shot for my client the day after tomorrow. I can be oversensitive, and worry that people are not happy with what I’ve done for them, or that I’m disliked. I hate to fall out with people, it leaves my heart hurting a little, even if that person doesn’t play a large role in my life. And so, the first word I chose for next year’s theme was peace. This quote summarises my thoughts well.

“Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work, it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart” – Unknown

I’m the only one that has the ability to create peace in my heart. I have plenty of tools- I can run more, create a space in my home just for me, turn my phone off in the evening. It’s something I’ll be working on.

Secondly, I crave JOY! Oh how I miss my Uni days, where on Sunday mornings with our duvets wrapped around and bacon sarnie in hand, I’d sit squealing with my best friends, recalling the night before, or when bursts of giggles would lead to snorts of laughter, inevitably inducing more and more giggles and snorts. I miss being silly and a little carefree. But there’s no reason why I can’t have these things now. Of course, I have responsibilities, but there are still enough hours in the week to set some aside for girlfriends, and joy and laughter and snorting. Being an expat I miss my oldest friends terribly. And I’m so fortunate that I am able to see them so frequently. But it’s not the same as having them down the corridor, or a tube ride away. So, enough complaining and reminiscing. It’s time to do something about that. And because I’m not sure that I’d be able to convince them to leave their lives in England, America, Norway and Singapore, my intention this year is to make more friends. More friends with whom I can laugh and play, and be joyful. With whom I can share.

I’m nervously putting it out there, because I believe the best way to manifest things is to tell people what you want. So here’s the intention board I made:

Wishing you all a year of Joyful Peace, and that all your intentions come true.